We probably should spend a little more time trying to generate wealth before we focus on taking more from the rich

I don’t want to dwell too much on the Occupy movement. I fully support the right to demonstrate in a democracy and I also sympathize with some (some) of the grievances. As I mentioned before, I struggle to understand how a movement that started as a lack of jobs protest morphed – in this province – to an anti-shale gas movement but I guess there must be reasons.

I still think if you are interested in getting more out of the rich and giving more to the poor, in New Brunswick we are going to need a few more rich. You can’t extract money out of the rich if there are not a whole lot of rich around.

Only PEI has fewer people reporting $250k in total income per year than New Brunswick and only Ontario had a worse growth rate from 2000-2009 in the number of persons reporting $250k worth of total income. Even lowly PEI had a much faster growth rate in the ‘rich’.

Of course we have to define the ‘rich’. Even at $250k per year we are talking about some doctors, lawyers, a few select small biz owners and a tiny handful of CEOs. There are only 1,300 ‘rich’ people across the entire province (those with $250k or more in income). Even if you socked it to them for $100k each you would still only bring in about 30% of what you need to eliminate the deficit.

If you get down into the $100k range, the number goes up to 17,000 people out of 583,000 who had income from at least one source in 2009.

The reality is if you want to tax the ‘rich’ in New Brunswick, you are going to have to tax those people making incomes that start to look a lot like middle income to me.

We should spend at least some of our time trying to create wealth in this province and then we can sock it to the wealthy.

You will note that the fastest growth areas with ‘rich’ people are those that are exploiting natural resources – oil, gas, potash, etc. yes, Ottawa-Gatineau is an anomaly but as others have pointed out there is a whole different kind of “gold in them thar hills”.

Persons Reporting $250,000 in total income or more (2009) and % Change since 2000